(New York) Oil prices ended on a mixed note on Wednesday, close to their closing levels the day before, caught in the contrary currents linked to demand which ended up neutralizing it.
Posted yesterday at 4:12 p.m.
The price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea for delivery in June fell 0.41% and ended at 106.80 dollars.
In New York, the barrel of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI) with maturity in May, which was the last day of use as a reference contract, gained 0.18%, to 102.75 dollars.
“I’m surprised we haven’t had more reaction” to the release of the US inventory report, commented James Williams of WTRG Economics.
Commercial reserves of U.S. crude fell by 8.02 million barrels in the week ended April 15, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), a surprise to analysts who had been expecting an increase in 3 million.
For Matt Smith, Kpler analyst, this new brutal movement of an unusual scale is linked to the acceleration of the activity of American refineries, relatively moderate imports and a jump in exports.
The 30% increase in the latter (compared to the average of the previous four weeks) is, according to him, “driven by Europe”, which is turning to American oil to compensate for the drop in Russian exports.
A sign that demand is accelerating in the United States, the price of gasoline has started to climb again, after several weeks of decline.
But the market still had in mind Tuesday’s downward revision of the estimate of global growth by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from 4.4% to 3.6%, according to Carsten Fritsch, analyst at Commerzbank .
Even more than this figure, or the war in Ukraine, “the first factor which prevents prices from rising is the confinements in China”, argued James Williams.
Craig Botham, economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, pointed out that the paralysis of several major cities in the country, in particular Shanghai, is already beginning to have effects on some of China’s major Asian partners.
Japan in particular saw its exports to China fall sharply in March.
“It is possible that we will see a bearish mood set in due to the demand situation,” said Michael Lynch, president of the firm Strategic Energy & Economic Research (SEER).